Tomcat in Love (30 page)

I blushed and began to defend myself, but at that instant Toni herself entered the conversation. The verb
manipulate
echoed like a jackhammer; the noun
predator
reared its monstrous head. Here was a flamboyant performance in all respects, an outrageous blend of indictment and tearful confession: the big lie gone berserk. I sat blank and dumbfounded.

Predator?

Manipulator?

What a nightmare! What a joke!

Toni exaggerated without shame, perjured herself, snipped quotations out of context. (At the same time, of course, the pathological little racketeer looked nothing short of spectacular. Black suede skirt, black pumps, bulging black sweater.)

President Pillsbury also took notice. The man rubbed his nose, massaged his paunch.

And, yes, if one did not know better, it would have been the most natural thing on earth to open one’s heart and soul to the deceitful tart. Halfway into her spiel, in fact, I was nearly sold on my own guilt.

Yet her allegations were
not
so.

Nor did Toni mention her own acts of extortion and outright blackmail.

Instead the gorgeous fraud claimed that I had “butted in” by offering “stupid suggestions” regarding her thesis. With a perfectly straight face, she asserted that the research was entirely her own, that I had done little more than “pick lint” off a piece of accomplished scholarship, that I had “gummed it up with a bunch of words,” that my overall contribution could at best be deemed “no big deal.”

“That’s his job,” Toni whined. “He’s
supposed
to help. And if I didn’t let him, the creep probably would’ve … I don’t even want to say it.”

President Pillsbury blinked. “Say what, my dear?”

“You know. It’s just too gross. You should fire him right now.”

Megan giggled.

There was, I distinctly recall, a gas-chamber silence in the room—the quiet sizzle of those lethal word pellets. My world had gone to vapor, or to fire, and I saw no point in demeaning myself. I sat unruffled. I said nothing. Like Caryl Chessman before me, I would bow out with silent grace.
^*

The paperwork, of course, had been prepared. (It lay in my lap at that very moment.) As a matter of good form, however, President Pillsbury thumbed through a stack of affidavits from former students, each signed in a conspicuously female hand, each attesting to the many hours I had spent slaving anonymously over my trusty Royal. (A prodigious professional output by any standard: seventeen polished theses over a career spanning a scant twenty-four years.) It occurred to me, in fact, that a lining of the purest silver had been sewn into the coarse fabric of this day. No more deadlines. No more last-minute journeys to the photocopier. My time would henceforth be my own—time to burn—and there was not a filament of doubt that I would be devoting it almost exclusively to the pursuit of my rigorous and sequential new hobby: Vengeance with a capital-crime V.

I smiled at Toni. I smiled at the miniature Megan. Already I had the Ripper Itch.

The remainder of our interview was devoted entirely to procedural issues. It is essential to emphasize that I was in no way “
fired” that afternoon; rather, for the record, I merely committed my signature to a number of documents resigning tenure, accepting a none too liberal severance solatium, agreeing to vacate my offices within the week. In exchange, the university would forswear public proceedings.

Was I embarrassed at all this? Did I turn scarlet, or sob, or display emotion?

Not in the least.

Signatures affixed, I rose to my feet.

“You’ll excuse me,” I said, “but I have a pressing dinner date.” Then I beamed at fair Toni, gazing with genuine fondness into the girl’s cottony brown eyes. “Perhaps we’ll meet again one day.”

“Yeah?” she said. “And then what?”

I shrugged. “Hard to predict. But I hope you’ll permit me to bury the hatchet.”

I arrived a half hour early at the Ramada bar, where I took immediate double-barreled refreshment and sat reviewing the day’s developments. By six-thirty I had wound my way through all seven stages of grief. Like Vietnam, I thought: nothing seemed real. Near the bottom of martini number three, I was struck by the notion that some tiny quirk in my personality might be attracting all this betrayal. A magnetic malfunction. Or dysfunction. It was true, I reasoned, that my general approach to the world could be viewed as a tad out of the ordinary, particularly with respect to certain attitudes regarding the opposite sex. I was simply too generous, too optimistic, too candid, too openhearted. I resolved to repair all that. Without fire walls, I had learned, one ends up in ashes. (
Fire:
another entry in my lexicon of love. At death’s very door, if someone were to scream “Fire!” I would instantly picture neither smoke nor flame, but rather the blazing image of Toni’s accusatory visage.) From this point forward, I told myself severely, I would take the most extreme precautions.

For example: the two lonely maidens seated at the end of the bar.

They had been eyeing me—the usual.

Sissy was tardy.

I required companionship.

Still, once burned is once warned, and I approached the pair
like a seasoned prizefighter, determined to size up these two very fit opponents.

“Thomas Henry Chippering,” I said warily. “Professor of Linguistics. Emeritus.”

As it happened, there was no cause for alarm. Virtually without a glance, as if anticipating my company, the two young ladies—Fleurette and Masha—swept their purses from the stool between them, which I ventured to occupy, and for the next twenty minutes this classy Franco-Russian alliance allowed me the pleasure of topping off their tumblers. (Fleurette: a florid little frog. White stretch pants, sheer pink blouse, flagrantly buxom. And the captivating Masha: slender as my Parker pen, Russian as a troika. Call me what you will—distinguished rake, jaunty ladies’ man, expert angler of the flesh—but clearly the Chippering charm once again held sway.

Incorrigible? Dogged as the sun?

Perhaps so.

Yet after a day like mine, how could one respond to two such charmers with anything but a guttural
Da
or an effervescent
Oui, oui
? The will to survive cannot be thwarted.

In any case, waiting for the delinquent Sissy, I sat bracketed by Fleurette to my left, Masha to my right, our limbs in frequent and friendly contact. Initially, the conversation took a predictable course:

Masha: “You remind me of somebody. I can’t place it.”

T.H.C.: “Martin Van Buren.”

Fleurette: “Who?”

T.H.C. (with a sigh): “You may call me Abe.”

Masha: “My God, that’s
it
! Tossing shots with a fuckin’ statue!”

Pointless chitchat.

Rapidly, therefore, I nudged the dialogue in a more profitable direction, summarizing with only minor exaggeration the ugly events of that afternoon. I could hardly be faulted for seeking sympathy. Fleurette (my favorite of the two) made toadish clucking
sounds as I described the disgraceful beating I had absorbed in my own classroom; Masha (a close second, gaining by the moment) fingered the fabric of my trousers as I bemoaned Toni’s duplicity and false heart. I told all. How Lorna Sue had deserted me for a rich, hairy, run-of-the-mill Tampa tycoon. How Herbie had driven an incestuous wedge into my marriage.

It was a relief, I must say, to open up. The dim, soothing, walnut-on-chrome bar seemed the ideal spot for such earthy confessions, and in my revitalized mood I made a mental note to fill out an evaluation form at the front desk. (The piped-in show tunes earned my highest rating, as did our basket of crunchy appetizers.)

In short, I decided that there could be nothing more comforting than the whispery wax and wane of a well-tended drinking establishment, with its multiple prospects both upstairs and down.

“Now, then,” I said. “Let us become fast friends.”

It was well after seven o’clock when Sissy made her belated appearance.

The girl looked nothing short of radiant. A yellow mohair sweater instantly caught my attention, followed in quick order by a pair of tautly woven jeans, a necklace strung with ersatz jade, and a perfume whose primary ingredient I took to be coriander.

Her hearing aid was visible only to the most exacting eye.

Clumsily, but with genuine delight, I rose and made the introductions.

“Nice to meet you folks,” Sissy more or less spat, then shot me a quick, questioning glance. The girl seemed disconcerted by the presence of my two companions. “Sorry I’m so darn late, but I couldn’t—”

“The delay,” I said chivalrously, “was excruciating, yet worth every instant.”

“Well, jeez!”

“Exactly,” said I, and reached for a pile of nearby napkins. “Welcome aboard.”

Promptly, then, I guided our party to a booth at the rear of the saloon. I called for the house’s premium champagne. “We were just discussing,” I explained to Sissy, “the ravages of my day.”

My sibilant secretary nodded with sympathy. “Yes, sir, it’s the big buzz around campus.”

“The buzz?” I said.

“Oh, yeah. Huge.”

I could not help feeling a bubble of pride. “Is that right? Talk of the town?”

“Pretty much,” said Sissy, “and you must be—well, jeez—you must be sick to your stomach. That’s why I’m here, because I thought you could use some company.” She lowered her eyes as if embarrassed, used a napkin to dab her lips. “
Lots
of people get fired and spanked and stuff, so you shouldn’t—”

“I was not ‘fired,’ ” I instantly retorted.

“Well, the way I heard it—”

“The man resigned,” said Fleurette.

“As a
protest
,” said Masha. “Against the stinking
world
!”

I shifted uneasily in my seat. It was true, I confess, that I had put my own spin on events, and with a modest wave of the hand I tried to make light of the matter. Water over the dam, I told them.

“There, you see?” said Fleurette. “The guy’s a martyr.” Sitting back, Fleurette appraised Sissy for a few moments. Then she smiled. “So listen, sugar, what do you say we form ourselves a little group later on? A barbershop quartet? Sound fun?”

“Quartet?” Sissy said.

“A foursome,” said Fleurette. “Like in golf.”

Sissy looked at me with obvious alarm. (I was shocked myself. The Ramada, of all places. Here was an item that would most certainly find its way into my forthcoming evaluation.)

I removed Masha’s stockinged foot from my lap.

“Golf,” I declared, “is not our game.” I reassured Sissy with a paternal squeeze of the knee. “Tell the girls about sec school.”

Sissy blushed. “Hey, look,” she said, “maybe I should just—you know—just take off.”

“Of course you shouldn’t,” I said brightly, and again gave the girl’s knee a tweak. “Go ahead now, fill them in on sec school while I visit the gentlemen’s room.”

“An actual school?” said Fleurette.

“Not sex!” sprayed Sissy.

Masha flinched. “Do me a favor, cover your mouth or something. It’s like talking to a garden hose.”

“Back in a jiff,” I said.

Heedless of Sissy’s protests, I slipped out of the booth and made a somewhat wobbly departure toward the lobby.

My spirits were high, my heart buoyant as balsa wood. The evening had turned out splendidly, full of promise, and I counted myself fortunate to have encountered three such devoted soul mates.

It was a surprise, therefore, to find myself sobbing as I stood at the urinal.

Where it came from I do not know. Moral exhaustion, I suppose. Lorna Sue’s face flickered before me, those cold eyes, the utter absence of love, and I was struck by the heinous reality that nothing would ever bring her back to me.

Then an odd thing happened.

I was still trembling as I recrossed the lobby, paying little heed to my surroundings, but purely by chance, as I passed a set of escalators, I found myself in front of a small shop that had been converted to a travelers’ wayside chapel. (Airports, yes, but here was something totally arresting in the field of hotel science.) I entered without hesitation. A pair of electric candles cast the only light, which was barely sufficient, and after a moment I edged forward and took a seat on one of three plastic pews. (Though Catholic by birth, I neither knelt nor crossed myself. It had been years—alas, decades—since I’d misplaced my faith on the vast, sterile prairies of my youth.)

For some time I simply sat there: half inebriated, soul-sick.

Dumbly, I murmured the word
faith
, as if the utterance itself might awaken something in me. But nothing much occurred, just an incoherent buzz in my blood.

What was the point? All the points were pointless.

Pity, I thought.

A lifelong quest for love—a ledger full of names and dates—and it all ended here in the sad sanctuary of a Ramada Inn.

I saw nothing blasphemous in removing my shoes and stretching out for a short nap.

Accompanied by a surly security guard, Sissy, Masha, and Fleurette awakened me not an hour later. “My gosh, I was worried sick,” Sissy said. “I thought you went out and—I don’t know—maybe strangled yourself or something. I mean, it was
scary
. Seriously.”

With my sleeve I wiped away the leftovers of this oration. “Fit as a fiddle,” I announced, and crisply sat up.

I put on my shoes, straightened my jacket, and led our party back into the restaurant for an overdue supper.

In my absence, the girls had run up a startling liquor tab, a fact that explained why the splashy young Sissy seemed to be getting along so well with Fleurette and Masha. Over a plate of hors d’oeuvres, the girl cheerfully queried them on the nuts and bolts of their trade: hours, wages, working conditions. (In part, it was the alcohol speaking, yet I also detected an apprentice streetwalker in the making.) Thus, as our entrées arrived, I reminded the seductive trio that idle shoptalk would get us nowhere.

“After all,” I said, “only one of us is without gainful employment.”

Sissy reached for the champagne. “Okay, but I was curious, that’s all. I never met any—you know—any real-life working girls. It’s
interesting.
” She licked a trail of stray foam from her hand. “Besides, you always talk about
you
. Give somebody else a chance.”